Five Steps to a Sharingan
by violinmana
Summary: The greatest damage comes not from the earthquake itself, but the aftershocks it leaves behind.


Five Steps to a Sharingan

by violinmana

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I) He sees him one day, standing on thin air, his matte black coat fluttering in a nonexistent wind, blood-red clouds conspicuously missing. Itachi raises his arm, points towards a training ground, and then glides in that direction. Naruto can do nothing but follow, curiosity overriding his desire to see Yamato in the hospital. It is the first day of September he follows the ghost of the most powerful shinobi to ever exist.

A week later, Naruto walks out of Training Ground 44, his shirt torn, hair disheveled, and pants missing. Tsunade had been frantic the entire week, sending ANBU and Jonin alike to search for the genin. He casually teleports into her office and tells her he's a Jonin now. He leaves in the same way, half of a second after he finishes speaking. To the embarrassment of both Tsunade and Kakashi, who were discussing where the blond might have gone, neither notices the fast-movement that is associated with teleportation. They keep it to themselves, and update the active Jonin roster.

From then on, for every first week of every month, Naruto disappears, gone to kami-knows-where. At the end of each week, he has a toad reverse-summon him to his apartment, claiming that it is far too bothersome to return under his own power. Sakura stops asking him how he gets where he goes after her second unsuccessful attempt, Kakashi eventually stops snooping about, and Tsunade begins to schedule missions around the missing weeks. No one notices the three-ringed necklace he starts wearing in place of the broken stone of the First Hokage.

II) The first time Naruto is alone in a closed room with Danzo, the latter tries to use a Sharingan genjutsu to bend the boy to his will. It lasts for exactly five seconds before Naruto viciously plunges two fingers and his thumb through weary flesh and battered bone and rips the stolen eye out of the old man's head. He examines the still-swirling Sharingan -deaf to the screams of the man before him- pops the eye in his mouth, chews, and swallows. He doesn't spare a second glance backwards as he leaves the room.

Three days later, a maid tasked with cleaning out the soundproof meeting rooms in the Hokage Tower screams as she finds Danzo's dead body on the floor, brittle black blood seemingly flowing out of his right eye socket. The cause of death is determined to be a heart attack, brought on by shock.

Four days later, Team Kakashi goes to eat barbeque with the remaining three members of Team Asuma. In actuality, it is an excuse for all parties involved to look for altered behavior in Naruto. Nothing out of the ordinary is noticed in the male blonde's behavior. However, when Sai picks up a particularly large piece of meat and stuffs it in his mouth, Sakura catches sight of his tongue. His unadorned, curse-seal-free tongue.

One week after Danzo's death, all traces of ROOT disappear. However, exactly one hundred and eight people are found dead in their beds. The causes of death are all the same: a kunai buried to the hilt in the forehead, then turned like a key with a raven feather in the kunai hole. Even the times of death are the same: 2340, military time. Konoha as a whole is shocked; some of the murder victims had been prominent Jonin, while several others are even part of the Hyuuga clan. Tsunade, Shizune, and Sakura have their suspicions; however, they keep those suspicions down and the medical reports secret. After all, they don't want any suspicion to fall on the future Hokage.

III) Neji walks in on Hinata one day in the Hyuuga courtyard, talking to a raven. The bird caws a farewell and disappears in a puff of smoke while his cousin stands up from her kneeling position, fingering a three-ring necklace around her neck. He moves to ask about the summoned bird, but then realizes that it is the second day of January. The branch-house genius then slowly walks away as the heir to the family eyes him out of the corner of her eye. She then flows a bit of chakra into the necklace and resumes her message for the raven to hear.

The eighth of January, Naruto takes Hinata out to dinner to make up for missing New Years. The restaurant is beautiful, the food is delicious, and both members of the party love it. The fact that Naruto had rented out the place for the evening shows his willingness and depth of both his love and his pocketbook. When a black-skinned, white-haired man jumps out of a shadow congratulating the couple's engagement with rap lyrics, Naruto breaks out in an infectious laugh.

The next day, the Hyuuga angrily confront the Uzumaki at his favorite training ground, demanding to know where he had taken their princess last night. He casually replies that he had taken her to his favorite restaurant in Lightning Country. The members of the clan are startled, then angrily start to demand [I]_why_[/I]. His only response is to draw some blood, slam his hand down on the grass, and summon a murder of ravens, one raven for every silver eye. Only after the jet-black birds take to the sky and start diving at the Hyuuga do they retreat to their clan compound. Every single one of them had seen the exact number of ravens the Uzumaki summoned. They never bother him again, even approving Hinata's engagement to him immediately after it is announced.

IV) Sakura has seen Naruto's skill level rise exponentially over the years, but this is utterly ridiculous. Naruto is facing Kisame, Sasuke, Juugo, and Suigetsu alone with only two kunai, and not only surviving, but winning decisively. He isn't tapping into the Kyuubi's dark chakra, nor is he accessing the Earth's natural energy. He dodges all the strikes by mere millimeters, and the dance of death, along with the frustrated faces of his enemies, makes Sakura stare in wonder. And then, as if he became bored with the low level of his enemies, decides to end it.

One wind blade from his left hand cuts Juugo in half from the top of his head to his crotch. His kunai, sharpened with wind-natured chakra, parries and cuts Sasuke's lightning-enhanced sword in half while he breaks both of the Uchiha's kneecaps with a kick. He then throws both of his kunai in his right hand backwards with so much strength that one goes through Kisame's skull while the other goes straight through his heart, both impacting on a tree behind the swordsman. Suigetsu, the coward that he is, runs away without looking back.

Naruto stalks towards Sasuke, blazing blue eyes looking straight into his terrified Mangekyo Sharingan eyes, even as the twice-traitor crawls backwards using only his hands and throws genjutsu after genjutsu to no effect. He even tries to cast an Amaterasu, but the [I]_demon_[/I] steps right through it without suffering a single burn. Naruto stops in front of the bastard, rips out the Sharingan eyes with both of his hands, and crushes them, the white and red residue of the eyes splashing into Sasuke's empty eye sockets even as he screams himself senseless.

Sakura is so sickened by the sight that she turns around and pukes her breakfast right into the face of Karin, who had been sneaking up behind the pink-haired girl hoping to use her as a hostage. Naruto cuts her in half with wind as he had done to Juugo, then continues the walk back to Konoha as if nothing had happened. Not only does Sakura have to scoop up both Juugo and Karin's innards to place their organs back inside their bodies, but also has to sew them back up into once piece with a needle and thread before she can carry the bodies back to Konohagakure for autopsy.

Naruto doesn't lend a hand, but keeps on walking down the road.

V) Two years later, when they are both nineteen, one Uzumaki Naruto marries one Hyuuga Hinata in a small ceremony attended only by their closest friends and family members. Unsurprisingly, one Haruno Sakura is not present, having requested a team change after Sasuke's death. The wedding, held at the Fire Temple, is considered to be the most beautiful ceremony seen by everyone who attends. At the point where the two kiss, a light splattering of rain falls over the temple and every one of the five major shinobi villages.

When the two leave the temple, Naruto jerks, as if he is burned. His hand shoots up to his necklace, and he turns his head to his right. Among the branches stands Itachi, eyes black and a raven on his arm. The two share a long look, and then the older nods once and fades away. Naruto fidgets with his necklace all the way back to Konoha. That night, the entire Uchiha section of the village burns. The couple spends the night in each other's arms, oblivious to the fire and the smoke that clouds the sky.

Their daughter is born a year after with the name Uzumaki Ushio. Their son is born two years after their daughter with the name Uzumaki Tomoya. Both children were born with sunny blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and their father's radiant smile. No traces of the Hyuuga were found in the two children.

Twelve years after Tomoya was born, both children had activated and evolved their blood-red Sharingan to the three-tomoe form.

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A/N: Many thanks to Kraken's Ghost, Fallacy, and Loki for their input on this major, major revision.


End file.
